It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

Every country has the government it deserves.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.